Cannibal
by ArentYouSophiaLoren-8887
Summary: Everything he loves, he destroys. All he does is consume. It's who he is; a monster with a ravenous appetite, a devourer of every soul he encounters. He cannot love without completely consuming. He is a cannibal.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Some more weirdness by me.**

**Sorry I've been so weird on Twitter lately. I've been in a really bad rut I dug myself into and now can't seem to get out of. Please forgive my rantings and ravings of a mad woman.**

**I guess I could dedicate this to litararylolita, as it is her birthday soon, and I told her I would write a fic for her. But this isn't exactly what she had in mind. Maybe you'll like the subsequent chapters?**

**I.**

He couldn't stand the smell.

It had nothing to do with Cece's lasagna or homemade garlic bread, but he still couldn't bring himself to eat. He wasn't hungry. He hadn't been hungry in a long time. He tried to think about the last time he'd actually wanted food, actually ate something without Clare or his mother reminding him to eat, pressing him to eat, doing everything but actually forcing his mouth open and shoving a spoon down his throat.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. The light was beginning to pound, too loud and too hard. He could feel a migraine coming on.

He stared at the plate in front of him- heaped with cheese and tomato sauce and oozing noodles. Like a pile of blood and bones and running viscera, dismembered limbs tumbling together. A hunk of flesh, steaming and fragrant. Feeling repulsed, he pushed the plate away, fork and all.

The smell was still there. Even with the fresh mozzarella and simmering tomato juices, it was still there. Salt and limp cabbage, like low tide.

Antiseptic. Sterility. Blandness.

_Hospital._

His head was pounding.

Across the table, CeCe sent him a sympathetic smile.

"Not hungry, Baby Boy?"

"Not really," he mumbled.

Beside him, Clare was quietly pushing the food on her plate, refusing to meet his eyes. Bullfrog was trying to appear unconcerned , sipping a beer and cutting into his lasagna with vigor, but Eli could tell he was keeping tabs on the conversation.

On his other side, Dylan was staring at him intently. His blue eyes were serious and still, peering at his father from under the fringe of his bangs.

"You're not hungry, Dad?"

Eli sighed. The migraine was seeping into his skull, causing his head to throb like the pulse of a bass.

"Dylan," Clare said, "help me clean up the plates, okay?"

She gave Eli a tired smile, something between pity and fear, and it made him want to knock his cup of Sprite and entire plate of the bloody dinner onto the floor. He hated seeing it in her eyes, and hated her for feeling that.

He hated himself more, for putting it there in the first place.

He blinked, forcing the emotion down. He was so tired. It was only seven-thirty, and he wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

His mother got up and wrapped her arms around him. She held him in his chair for a moment, rocking gently back and forth and brushing his hair back.

"It's good to have you back, baby," she whispered, giving him a kiss on the forehead.

He accepted her touches and her talk without struggle, without emotion. He let her kiss him again, cupping the back of his head in her palm and running her hands through his scalp, as if measuring him, securing the feel of him back in her hands, reminding herself of the solidness of him.

_Feel Eli. Eli home. Eli real. _

_To her, maybe. _

Bullfrog stayed sitting at the table, staring off into space. Eli knew what he was thinking: he couldn't look at him. He couldn't deal with this.

Eli didn't blame him. He couldn't deal with himself. How could he expect anyone else to deal with him? He didn't expect them to.

"Dad?"

He made himself look at his son. He had to make himself look at his son.

"Yeah, Bud?"

"You didn't eat anything," he informed him. So serious.

"I know."

"Are you sick?"

"No, I'm just tired."

"When you were in the hospital, did you get better? Cause you look sick again."

Bullfrog cleared his throat loudly. Pushing his chair away with unnecessary force, he lumbered off to the kitchen, not looking at either of them.

Eli stared after his father's retreating backside. He felt nothing.

Not that _that_ was anything new.

"Dad?"

Eli pushed his chair back from the table. "Come here, Bud. You want to?"

He expected Dylan to say no- he wasn't a come-to-me child- but his son scrambled up into his lap without hesitation. His legs were so short that his feet barely dangled over the edge of the chair.

Eli wound his arms around his waist, pulling the boy closer to him, his hands hooking against Dylan's pulsing, overround child belly. He rested his chin on the horizon of Dylan's head, breathing him in: orange soda (Clare never let him drink soda, but nothing was normal these days) the organic stuff Clare did their laundry in that smelled like a mixture of oatmeal and Irish Spring, and, overwhelmingly, of garlic.

Eli closed his eyes and breathed him in once more, letting it fill him. The headache dulled. The smell that refused to leave was, for the moment, being fought back into some cavern in his mind.

_Go away,_ he urged it. He squeezed his eyes shut, tightening his grip around Dylan. _Go away. Go away. Let me have this. _

"Dad, you're hurting me."

_Of course. _Eli released him.

Dylan was tense in his arms. It didn't surprise Eli. Dylan wasn't much for touch, or being touched. He didn't like curling up with Clare or cuddling with her; never had he crawled into Clare and Eli's bed late at night after a nightmare, or early in the morning to wake them up. He eschewed most types of physical affection, whether it was hugs from Helen, CeCe ruffling his hair or even Clare giving him a goodnight kiss. Even as a baby, he hadn't enjoyed it. Clare used to joke that being a baby had offended Dylan's dignity.

Besides, even on the good days, Dylan hadn't grown up in a house where Eli regularly dispensed affection. Dylan wasn't used to Eli offering his arms, his lap, his shelter. Eli wasn't much of a shelter, unless it was the kind that was held together with spit and mud. A scotch tape patch job here, a little ABC gum there. Tissue paper windows, a straw roof. Watch for sparks, they might ignite the entire place in seconds, burning it to the ground in the blink of an eye.

More often than not, Dylan found what little normalcy he knew in the days his father couldn't even manage to get out of bed. The days his son sat outside Eli and Clare's bedroom door, pushing his Brio trains along the wooden tracks (Randall Edwards had given them to him on his last birthday, a relic from his own childhood and something Dylan cherished beyond reason) set on the floor, one ear pressed to the door. Clare would come by periodically, coming into their bedroom to kiss Eli's cheek or brush his hair out of his eyes or force him to at least take a bite of some food he wouldn't eat anyway. She would tell Dylan not to bother Dad; he was sleeping. But Dylan would stay there anyway, not making a sound, but his solid, unseen presence and the roll of the wooden wheels on the toy tracks were enough to remind Eli of one other person he was letting down.

"Are you still sick, Dad? Did you get your medicine there? You need medicine when you're sick."

Dylan was watching him curiously. He reached one hand up, placing it on Eli's forehead; a mimicry of Clare's own actions when their son had a fever.

Eli couldn't help but feel touched by his sureness of the way the world worked. Grabbing his son's wrists in both hands, he pressed the boy's hands to his own cheeks.

"Do I feel warm, Dylan?" he murmured, bringing his face closer to Dylan's.

Dylan has his mother's freckles and blue eyes. He has Eli's serious expression, but Clare's smile. He had his father's glare, but with Clare's fierce eyes. He didn't look much like Eli, except in the passing of an expression or idiosyncrasy. If he mirrored anyone looks-wise, it was Clare's father.

Eli couldn't deny he resented that his son didn't look like him. All fathers must feel like this, he reasoned. All fathers must wish that their children, especially their sons, look like them. Something about males leaving their marks. Or maybe it has to do with wanting to leave some part of us that lives on after we're gone. Then again, maybe those are all bullshit philosophies and he just wants his kid to look like him out of vanity. Whatever the reason, Dylan was resolutely Edwards in looks, and Eli resented it.

"Nope," Dylan said, a crease in his forehead as he brushed his hands across Eli's face. "No fever. Do you have a sore throat? Mom makes me take that gross stuff when I have a sore throat. Did they give you shots?"

"Nope. No shots. Just lots and lots of gross medicine."

Dylan frowned. "I don't think it worked."

Eli felt like crying, right then and there. _Me, neither, bud. Me, neither._

Instead, he just pulled Dylan closer, burying his face in the boy's hair.

**II.**

Dylan didn't know what to think about his dad being gone.

It had been so fast that Dylan didn't even know his dad wasn't around until he was already gone. His Mom had told him that he was sick, he needed to go the hospital for a few days, that regular medicine wasn't working, so he needed some special medicine to make him get better.

Dylan hadn't realized he'd even left the house. He just thought his Dad had just been sleeping all day again.

He just woke up one morning, and he was gone.

Dylan didn't understand why his Dad couldn't get better with regular medicine, like Dylan did when he had a cold or a fever, because his Dad hadn't seemed sick when he was at home, but when he tried to ask his Mom what kind of "special medicine" Dad needed and what was making him sick, his Mom just told him that "his heart hurt".

Dylan had heard this before. He remembered going into his Dad's room- he was still sleeping and still in his clothes from yesterday, even though it was almost dinnertime of the next day, and why was he sleeping all day long in clothes that smelled?- and the room had been all dark, even though it was sunny outside and summertime, so hot that Dylan had a sunburn from when Grandma Helen had taken him to the pool the other day. He'd gone to the edge of the bed and saw not his Dad, but something else, just a lump that smelled and breathed.

That was the day before he'd gone away, and Dylan didn't know why.

No matter how many grown-ups he asked, though, nobody would tell him what had made Dad so sick that he couldn't get better with regular medicine. Dylan hated the gross stuff his Mom made him take when he had a cold- and a lot of the time wouldn't tell her if he felt sick, just because he hated taking the medicine- but even though it tasted disgusting, it always made him feel better. So what was wrong with his Dad?

He still didn't know, but he was glad to have him home. Suddenly as he had disappeared, his Dad was back home again, an absence that had left Dylan dizzy and confused, because this new Dad was letting Dylan sit on his lap and was hugging him, and while it was strictly more touching than Dylan liked, he missed his Dad so much that he let him hug him and hold him and smell his hair, which he found weird.

CeCe came back from the table with a plate full of orange slices and a glass of wine in her hand. Dylan couldn't understand why grown-ups drank it; it smelled awful and tasted worse. He knew this because when he was really little, still a baby, he had grabbed Bullfrog's cup and drank from it, then nearly spit up on the carpet because the taste was so nasty. Bullfrog had clapped him on the back in the way Dylan hated and told him that he should probably lay off the stuff, at least for a few more years, but Dylan was sure he'd never drink it again, ever.

CeCe bent down and kissed his Dad again on the forehead. She was doing that a lot, Dylan noticed. CeCe was always kissing everybody- his Mom, his Dad, Bullfrog, him (he didn't like that- all the touching and kissing and hair-ruffling- too much touching) but ever since his Dad came back, she was all over him even more, like she couldn't help herself.

His Dad looked down at the plate and gives Cece a look. "Oranges?" he asked.

"They're from the new French market downtown," CeCe told him. "They're really good. Try one."

His Dad rolled his eyes.

"I'm gone for two days and we have oranges for dessert?" he asked.

He glanced down at Dylan and gave him that look that grown-ups have when they're teasing you into thinking they're being serious, when really they're just joking but can't just come out and say it. It usually frustrates Dylan- why can't people ever mean what they say?- but this time he didn't care, because for a second it was like his old Dad had come back.

"We don't like this," his father said. "Where's the pie?"

Dylan saw CeCe smile, but not like something was funny.

His Dad looked down at him and grinned. "I'm just kidding. We love oranges, right Bud?"

Dylan didn't like oranges that much. He hated the gross pulpiness of them and how it made him gag, and he hated how the juice dribbled down his chin and made his fingers all sticky. Plus, he'd once bitten into the skin without realizing that you had to peel it, and it had been so gross he'd nearly thrown up.

His Dad reached out and grabbed a piece of cut-up fruit off the plate. He stuck it in his mouth, sucking on the soft inside, and glanced down at Dylan, making a face at him with his orange peel mouth.

Dylan stared at his father's Jack O' Lantern grin. He tried to smile, but all he could really think of were those bad dreams he sometimes has. The kind where he wants to scream, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to get the sound out, and then he realizes that his mouth is gone- not just sewn shut, but entirely _gone_, and there's only a piece of skin between his chin and the bottom of his nose. Just a blank face with eyes that are doing the silent scream in place of his vanished mouth.

**III.**

Clare watched Eli from her vantage point in the kitchen. She watched as their son crawled into his lap- something that hardly ever happened, because (much to her dismay a lot of the time) Dylan was not a particularly cuddly or affectionate child- and Eli wrapped his arms around him like a vine. She watched CeCe bring them the oranges, reminding her of an offering before a statue of a god, praying to avoid disaster. The meager offering of the French market oranges (since when were oranges French?) placed at the stone sandals of the sculpture, backing away slowly and humbly in the hopes that the gods would find their gift, however earthly and undeserving it was, as something that could change the fortune of their lives.

Behind her, Bullfrog slammed the door to the refrigerator, startling her.

"Sorry," he mumbled, reaching around her for a bottle opener to pop the cap off his beer.

"It's alright," she muttered, still watching them.

Eli had popped a slice into his mouth, slurping on the juices loudly. There was something luxurious about his complete disregard of consciousness when doing it, something almost reckless about him sucking on that orange, sinking his teeth into the soft, tender flesh behind the cork-covered, bitter skin and the tangy juices like a bright July dawn.

Bullfrog cleared his throat, making her look his way.

"How's he been acting?" he asked under his breath. "He been normal enough?"

Clare shrugged. "Nothing abnormal. He just seems tired. Why, did you notice anything?"

He made a noncommittal gesture at her, then took a swig of his drink.

"Wouldn't know it if I saw it," he said vaguely. "It's not like he's making his 'Crazy Eyes' and running around with a butcher knife."

"He hasn't said much all day."

Bullfrog grunted back a non-answer.

Clare turned back to watch them once more.

Eli was now grinning down at Dylan. The peel was still in his mouth, covering his lips and his teeth, stretching his expression into a ghoulish, twisted leer that couldn't help but make her shiver. It looked demented, and as Eli bent his head closer to Dylan's, Clare had the sudden, fearful jolt, like the one that accompanies one missing a step on the stairs, that he would suddenly sink his insane grin into the boy's neck.

Bullfrog lingered over her shoulder, peering at his boy and grandson, countertop voyeurs.

"Everything alright with them?" he asked softly from behind her.

Clare didn't take her eyes off the pair. "Everything's fine."

"You sure?" Bullfrog tapped her shoulder, and she turned to look at him. "It's a lot for a kid to handle. Does he get what's happening?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. I told him that Eli needed to go away for a little while. He hasn't said much since then."

"Does he know why?"

"I don't think so. I wasn't sure how to talk to him about it."

Bullfrog glanced back at them, looking pained.

Dylan stretched up in Eli's lap, and much to Clare's surprise, kissed his father's orange peel mouth- something that clearly shocked Eli, too, because his eyes flashed with something like his old fire and untapped surprise. Dylan had rarely, if ever, made such a leap of affection since he had outgrown his teething times. Clare could count on one hand the times Dylan had done such a thing to even her, unless specifically instructed. It was never a spontaneous gesture of love, this butterfly of emotion that landed on you and was gone so quickly that you barely had time to register it had landed on you at all until it had already flown away, its magnificent colors disappearing into the sky, leaving you dumbfounded that something with that much delicate, skittish perfection had momentarily graced you.

"If you don't want to do it," Bullfrog murmured, "CeCe and I will. It's not gonna be easy, but if you want us to talk to the kid, we will."

Eli popped the peel out of his own mouth, dented with his teeth marks, and gave it to Dylan; Cece descended on the pair, admonishing them for exchanging germs, and handed Dylan a wedge of the sunny fruit of his own, which he looked at with a scrutinizing distrust.

"It's alright," she whispered back. "I can do it."

Bullfrog nodded and took another somber sip from his beer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Happy early birthday to literarylolita! You're awesome. **

**I.**

The clock stared down at him with an unmoved, austere solemnity.

_Silly mortals,_ it taunted.

The smoothly polished, venerably numbered old face looked down at Eli with half-tired, half-amused condescension.

_Silly mortals, who think they can control me, with their systems and numbers and linear mathematics. I'm not a measurement. I'm a climate. You can't control a climate, anymore than you can control the rise and fall of the sun. You can cage me in this mahogany cell, but don't think for a minute that just because you attach a number to me, that I can be listed. All that exists in me existed then, and exists millennia from now. I am nonstop. I am nonstart. I am deathless, and I am lifeless._

_It's just a clock, Eli,_ he told himself.

Which reminded him.

It was 8 PM; time to go tuck Dylan into bed.

_(Silly mortals.)_

He had told Clare he would do it. He hadn't seen the boy in two days. This was what he was supposed to do.

_(What he was supposed to want to do.)_

Enough of that.

He did not dislike this life. He did not dislike this night, with Clare, with Dylan, nor wish to just swallow it all in one big gulp so that he could fall into its drugging effects and sleep through these moments: the dim light of the hallway, the streaks on the walls (casualties of a house with a small child; even one so careful as Dylan was not immune to little boy wiles), the chipping paint in the doorframe.

His son was supposed to be asleep, but he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. The hallway light dappled his face, making it look as if some sliver of moonlight had touched him; as if a deity had somehow skimmed the world briefly, touching down into this lesser world of the physical and the flesh, checking in to see on the havoc his lesser beings had wreaked on this world they did not deserve, checking on the unabated destruction with a solemn gravity before disappearing once more into the ethereal, becoming the mother-of-pearl sheen that spotlighted the dark world to remind them that there was always someone watching, and that further careless destruction of their world would not go unseen.

Dylan had one of his beloved toy trains in his hand, hovering it suspended in mid-air with one hand, and then suddenly, inexplicably, sent it careening downward, hurtling headlong into the oncoming darkness, dooming the lives of any that might be inside.

It was the hardest thing for him to admit- then and now- but at one point, he didn't want this little boy. He knew Clare would never have considered not keeping the baby, but back then, they had both known the reality of her situation: they weren't married, Eli was in university, and both of them were unemployed. On top of everything else, Eli had enough shit going on in his life and was in enough trouble without anything more added to the picture. He could barely take care of himself; how the hell was he ever supposed to take care of a baby?

It was nights like this that make him question those same words from nearly five years before. Moments when the cold comes and threatens to take him; takes over not only his life, but the lives of all that inhabit his world. Surrounded by nothing but his own inexhaustible, voracious anger and grief and then- more frightening to him than the moments of rage- the sweltering atmosphere of his apathy, where he will calmly sit by and let everything he once cared about disappear and not care, as long as it didn't interfere with his desire to just sleep the day away.

Days like that, he felt nothing, and he didn't care. Complete disregard for everything and everyone in his life, himself included, smothered him like a wool blanket. In times like that, he couldn't eat, couldn't work, couldn't write. He had to force himself to acknowledge his son, to touch Clare, to talk to his mother on the phone- because she called him three times a week without fail, and even when Eli would instruct Dylan to tell her that he was sleeping and didn't want to be woken up, CeCe refused to get off the phone until he had at least grunted two or three intelligible sentences to her.

On those days, the desire to wrap himself in his blanket of indifference overwhelmed him, along with the exhaustion. He would just close his eyes and not go to sleep, but instead lie there for hours, tasting sleep on the tip of his tongue like the name of an acquaintance he had seen many times at parties, but for some reason can never place the name to the face. It haunts him and taunts him, and leaves him pleading for the night that he longed so fervently for during the daylight hours to just go away, until there was no day at all, or night, either. He wanted Time to go away altogether.

"Dad?"

He thought: My son is a beautiful boy. Clare and I, we made a good baby together.

"Yeah, Bud."

"It's after 8 o'clock."

Dylan gestured to the clock on his bedroom wall, shaped like a ship's steering wheel. His entire bedroom was boat-themed; the bed sheets, wallpaper, and various knickknacks around the room were decorated with this motif. His carpet was oceanic blue; his blue comforter was covered in loud, primary-colored sails attached to upside-down half moons supposed to resemble sailboats. On the walls, there were dozens of the same figure- hundreds of little boats, all lined up neatly and regimentally in their printed exactness. Hundreds of unmanned ships, drifting unanchored and directionless against the vast endlessness of their wallpaper sea.

"I see that. Grandad taught you to tell time, didn't he?"

Dylan nodded.

"And what time is it now?" Eli asked, coming over and sitting by him on the bed.

Dylan stared back at the clock, his eyes narrowing. He was, Eli knew, connecting his ability to get this right with Eli's opinion of him overall. There was a desperation in the intensity of his concentration, an agonizingly transparent gesture of presentation, lost somewhere in the incongruity between ambition and ability. His eyes were round. His hands were clenched. He bit his lip, not just bit but gnawed, beaverlike. He was so naked and pleading in his quiet anxiety. He didn't just want to please Eli- he wanted to WIN him. To dazzle Eli into loving him as wholly and utterly and desperately as Dylan loved Eli.

What Dylan didn't understand was that Eli already did.

In this moment with his son, fresh from his bath and blue-eyed like Clare, Eli could have devoured him with all the ravenous adoration that Dylan's eyes yearned at him with. His love for his son was so whole and strong and unadulterated, it was an appetite. The cliché "starved for love" came to mind, and as much as he hated clichés for their trite cop-out excuses of turning a phrase, he felt weak to the point of swooning- a hollow, swooping sensation in his belly, the hunger for his son so ferociously all-consuming it could be called monstrous in its need to engorge.

And then it was gone. The apathy returned. The longing didn't go away entirely, like a choked flame, but rather like a bus that simply stopped at a rusting sign on a city sidewalk a moment, doors swinging open, before moving on its way to the next stop. It doesn't disappear so much as move on, still acknowledged but already passed you by.

"Eight fifteen," Dylan whispered huskily. His eyes darted wildly, fearfully, to his father, pleading for a confirmation.

Eli glanced up at the minute hand, stuck resolutely on the five.

"That's right," he said. "Eight fifteen."

He registered Dylan's relief in waves.

"Which means," Eli teased lightly, "that _someone_ needs to go to bed."

Dylan nodded, then turned and rooted through his night table (lamp shaped like an anchor), pulling out something small and slightly tarnished.

"Grandad gave me this," he said, handing to Eli with reverence. "He said because I could tell time now."

Eli studied the dull object. He knew it well- it was the same watch Clare had given to him years ago, the watch her father had owned before the divorce. He didn't know she had given it back to Randall, but either way, it looked as if it had found its way back to Eli, even years later.

**II.**

When you are six-going-on-seven, you know some things and you don't know some things.

Dylan has learned time, and understands it. He knows how to measure everything with the watch on Grandad's arm, and this pleases him. Now, he at least can understand, a little bit, of the grown-up world.

The watch Grandad gave him tells him when things will happen, and when things will end. It tells him how many minutes have to go by until something happens, and how many minutes will pass until something ends. The two hands on the clock never lie, never waver, never stop, never fail.

He knows what to expect.

What he has learned, but does not understand, is the darkness from his parents' bedroom in the middle of the day. The smell of his father's clothes, or why he acts like he doesn't hear Dylan or his Mom or CeCe, or why CeCe always makes him get his Dad on the phone when she calls, even when Dylan tells her Dad is sleeping. He remembers the night his Dad got really angry at nothing and threw his plate against the wall, and his Mom cried and Dylan hid in the closet for two hours.

He's learned, but does not understand, that his Dad's heart hurts, that he needs special medicine, and that he had to go away, but he'd come back and he wasn't the same.

He wasn't hiding in his room, and he wasn't mad, throwing plates at the wall and yelling at no one, but this wasn't his Dad, either, and Dylan didn't know why.

His father sat beside him on the bed. Dylan laid down, and he tucked the covers around him, smoothing the wrinkles out over Dylan's stomach, smiling at him in the darkness.

"It's time for someone to go to sleep," his Dad told him.

Dylan wriggled under the covers. He was tired, and eight o'clock was the time he always went to bed, but he didn't want his Dad to go, not yet.

Because he'd woken up one morning, and he wasn't there.

And who knew when that would happen again?

"Don't," he said. He grabbed his Dad's hand, feeling the rings he always wore- big and scary, weird skulls and snakes and even an old one with a star on it, which his Mom said was called the Star of David, and when he asked her who David was, his Dad said a boy in a story who killed a giant and Dylan asked him, "like Jack and the Beanstalk?" and for some reason, that had made his Mom and Dad laugh, really, really hard.

His Dad looked down at him. "What's wrong, Bud?"

"I don't feel good," he said. Which wasn't true- he didn't feel like he had a fever- but his stomach was knotted up, like when he lay in bed on Christmas morning, waiting for his Mom to say it was okay to come down and open his presents. It was the same kind of knot he got from waiting, except this time, he was scared of what might happen when the waiting was over, instead of excited.

His Dad bent closer to him, frowning. "Are you sick? You seemed fine at dinner. What's wrong?"

"My tummy hurts," Dylan replied, and as soon as he said that, wished he hadn't. He hated using the word "tummy"- that was a baby word- but it just slipped out, and he bit his lip, embarrassed. He didn't want to sound like a baby. He was six-going-on-seven. He wasn't a baby.

He clutched his Dad's hand harder. "Can you stay please? I need someone to lie down with."

His Dad still looked confused. "Are you sure, Bud?"

"Please? I'm not tired at all." Another lie, but he wanted his Dad to stay with him right now more than he cared about being a liar.

His father sighed. "Alright," he said, pushing the covers back and crawling under. "But not for long, okay? Cause you need to sleep. You have your doctor's appointment in the morning."

Which was another big thing he was worried about. Dylan had always hated the doctor because of the shots, but now he was even more afraid of the doctor. What happened if they decided that he needed to go away, like his Dad?

He must have gulped, because his Dad sat up next to him and looked at him. "You okay, Bud?" he asked.

Dylan shrugged, even though now, his stomach really _did_ hurt.

His Dad looked at him like he knew Dylan was lying. "What's wrong?" he whispered. "You feel sick?"

Dylan decided to just ask him.

"What if the doctor says that I have to go away?" he blurted out.

His father gave him a weird look. "Why would he think that?" he asked.

"Because you did," Dylan replied. "The doctor said that you needed special medicine and had to go away. What if he tells me that, too?"

His Dad suddenly looked so sad that it makes Dylan's stomach hurt even _more. _He burrowed back under the covers, grabbing Dylan and pulling him tightly to him, wrapping his arms around him.

"That's not going to happen," he whispered fiercely.

"How come?" Dylan whispered back. His face was pressed against his Dad's shoulders. He was so skinny that his bones stuck out, poking Dylan in the face, and he tried to move away, but his Dad was holding him too tightly.

"Because," his Dad told him, "you're not sick like me. I was sick and needed to go away to get better, but you don't have this."

"How do you know?" Dylan demanded. He knew he was using a "tone"- as in, "Dylan, don't use that tone with me", like Grandma Helen would tell him, or his Mom when he said he didn't want to do something like take a bath or put his shoes on- but he didn't care about getting in trouble. He didn't know that his Dad could just disappear like that. How come he knew Dylan wouldn't go away, too? Or that his Dad wouldn't just disappear _again_?

His Dad pulled him back so that they were facing each other. Gently, he took Dylan's face in his hands, and bent their heads together.

"Because I know," was all he told Dylan. "You don't have it. Okay? So don't worry about it."

His Dad stayed next to him, holding his face, their foreheads kissing. He just lay there for a while, holding him, and there was something going on in his face that Dylan didn't understand but made him feel like he was being read, like a book.

"Do you want me to tell you a story?" his Dad asked suddenly. "Hmm? How about a story?"

Dylan hadn't heard his Dad tell him a story in forever. Most of the time, he didn't understand them, and when he asked him to explain them he would only get more confused.

And sometimes, they really scared me.

But he wanted his Dad to stay, so he nodded.

"Yeah. Tell me a story."

His Dad let go of his face and pulled the covers up to his chin. He threw one arm around Dylan, letting him rest his head on his father's chest, and pulled him close, so that Dylan could hear the soft thud of his Dad's heart whoosh in his ear.

His Dad ran his hand through Dylan's hair- something he normally hated- but then his fingers brushed across his forehead, and it instantly made Dylan's eyes fall shut and a shiver run down his back. He was a sucker for anyone who did that, and you needed nails like his Dad to make it feel _that_ good.

"This is the story of a monster," his Dad began.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: People are actually reading this?**

**I don't own the line from **_**Where The Wild Things Are**_**, or Degrassi. All I own is Dylan. And a Nickel Creek Greatest Hits CD. But that's about it. **

**I.**

_This is the story of a monster._

_This monster had a friend. His friend was a little boy. They played together all the time on a big island they lived on all by themselves. _

_When the monster was with the boy, he forgot that he was a monster. Because when he and the boy played together, they were just like anybody playing. It didn't matter that one had teeth and claws and the other was a regular person. They were best friends. He forgot he was a monster, and the boy did, too. _

_Because he loved the monster, and the monster loved him._

_But then, something happened that made the monster realize what he really was- _

_Just that._

_A monster._

_The monster thought it was his job to protect the boy. After all, he was so big, and the boy was so small. He thought that if anyone tried to hurt his best friend, he would fight them. _

_Because that's what you do for someone you love- you fight for them. You protect them. You keep them safe from harm._

_One day, he thought of a way to protect the boy. He told him to hide inside his mouth. _

_Because they both forgot that he was a monster, the boy climbed up inside his mouth. _

_And the monster, because he was a monster, ate the boy up._

_Once he realized what he'd done, he was overwhelmed with grief and loneliness, and he cried for days. He hadn't meant to do it. He loved the boy. He had only been trying to help him. He wanted to keep the boy safe. He thought he was protecting him, by letting him climb inside his mouth. But he ended up swallowing him whole._

_After that day, the monster discovered that his teeth were beginning to fall out. Every morning, he would wake up and find more teeth on the ground, and he didn't know why. Finally, he'd lost all of his teeth, and he couldn't eat anymore._

_He decided that now it was time to go back to the Island of the Monsters._

_He didn't want to go back to there, not at all. He liked his own island; it was his home, and it was a place filled with lots of happy memories. The other monsters on the Island of the Monsters were mean. They never forgot they were monsters, unlike him._

_But he thought that he should go there, because he didn't want to be alone anymore. _

_So he decided to build a boat out of his teeth. They were very big teeth; they were almost as big as he was. When they were in his mouth, he could hide them away from everyone, so people wouldn't be scared by the sight of them. They would only come out when he was hungry. Nobody else could see how big and terrible they really were until they were about to be swallowed._

_Once he built the boat, he sailed to the Island of the Monsters. But when he got there, they told him that he couldn't live among them:_

"_You don't have your teeth anymore," the other monsters told him. "You can't live here if you don't have any teeth."_

_The monster felt even more alone. He tried to tell the others that just because he didn't have any teeth, didn't mean he wasn't one of them. He was still a monster, and he needed to live with them. But they refused to listen. He was weak, and they left him, alone and toothless, on the beach, going back to their mountain caves._

_The monster was heartbroken. He had nowhere else to go. He had eaten his best friend, the only person who loved him, and now his own kind had abandoned him. Turning away from the deserted beach, he looked out over the black ocean, and knew there was only one more thing to do._

_He jumped into the water, and he began to swim._

_The monster swam far, far out. He swam so far that the water was so dark, he felt as if he was falling into the sky._ _He kept swimming through the water, until finally, he reached the other side. And he realized, when he walked out of the water onto the beach, that he had turned into a little boy._

_He decided that because he was a little boy again, he could go back to his mother. You see, the monster had once been a regular little boy, just like any other. But when he had transformed, he realized that he would only hurt his mother. As much as he loved her, he would hurt her someday. And he loved her too much to ever do that, so he'd decided to run away to protect her._

_When his mother saw him, she asked him why he had run away. He explained to her that he had turned into a monster, and he did it to save her from him. _

_She asked him, "If you're a monster, what happened to your big teeth?"_

_He told her, "They fell out, so I made them into a boat and tried to go home."_

_She asked, "Where's your boat now?"_

_He said, "I left it on the Island of the Monsters."_

_She asked, "Why didn't you try and come back here, first? This is your home."_

_He said, "Because I was still a monster then. I was afraid I would eat you up."_

_His mother reached behind her neck, and began to unzip her skin. When it fell to her feet like a robe, she stepped out of it, and the boy now realized that he was looking at another monster. _

_What was more, when he looked into the beastly yellow eyes of the monstrous creature, he realized that he had changed, too. He turned into the boy that he had eaten back on the island. And the monster that had pretended to be his mom told him that when he had been a monster, he had eaten up his entire family._

_And then he decided to go back to the island to be by himself. Because he was so sad. All he ever did was eat up everyone that he loved._

That was probably the weakest resolution he had ever written to anything, ever.

Eli stared at his computer screen blearily. In the dark cave of his office, the blue light shimmering from the screen made him squint, and the headache that had been building in the back of his skull since dinner that night was finally hitting him at full force.

He couldn't go to sleep, though. Not yet. He needed to finish this, now, while it was fresh in his mind.

Not that he had made a plan to write tonight. Normally, when he had his headaches- like this motherbitch that was building now- he couldn't do much of _anything._ The headache would overcome him, sinking into him piecemeal until he was entirely drained, and then leave him to ring out in the darkness, moaning quietly under his breath and trying to remain as motionless as possible.

But he had come up with this story- no, that wasn't quite true. He couldn't explain, entirely, what had come over him as he told his son this story. It had just…flowed. Words pouring out, unabated, unhinged, as if they had always been there, waiting to be spoken- and the writer in him (as if it were possible to separate that from any other part of him) knew he needed to get this out, now, headache or not.

He had no idea where this story had come from, but staring at the screen, he knew that it was one of those things that he simply couldn't ignore. The idea would continue to tap at his mind, a branch tapping on your window as you're trying to sleep- _tap tap tap, here I am, listen to me!-_ and would keep you awake at night, no matter how tired you were, and would refuse to go away on its own. YOU had to deal with it.

Take the branch. Write the story.

His head reeled, and for a moment, he felt the wave of oncoming nausea. Pale strands of glowing string-like lights appeared before his eyes, his headache manifested, and he knew that he needed to give it a rest.

_Get some sleep, _Clare had told him, when she'd come to check on him before she'd gone to sleep. It felt like hours ago that had happened, but he really didn't know- it could have been only a few minutes ago. His stomach lurched, and for a moment, he thought he might be sick; jackknifing into himself, he pushed away from his desk and grabbed his office trash can, waiting for something to either happen or subside.

_Come to bed._ Clare's voice. Who knew how much long ago that had been.

She'd come into the office, barefoot, robed, hair awry and eyes black-bagged.

_The doctor said that these new meds would help you sleep more; he said it would help you quiet your mind, so you can actually sleep. You shouldn't get the nightmares anymore._

_Of course not,_ he'd told her. _You have to sleep to have nightmares. _

Clare had looked ready to cry.

_I can't do this anymore,_ she'd half-gasped, half-wept. _I mean it, Eli. I can't deal with this if you can't take the slightest bit of care for yourself. The doctor said you needed to take better care of yourself. Do you want to end up right back in the hospital again? Is that what you want?_

No, of course not.

He didn't want to go back to the hospital. He didn't want to be sedated into a white blank haze, hearing indistinguishable voices fade in and out as he inhabited somewhere between sleep and wake, neither in one nor the other, unable to claw his way to one no matter how hard he tried. He didn't want to be hooked up to an IV, force-fed the nutrients his body rejected every other way.

He didn't want to relive that night. When his heart pounded so furiously that he felt as if he were having a heart attack at twenty-six, shaking uncontrollably, his palms bleeding from digging his nails so fiercely into his skin in the deepest throes of anxiety-ridden, nightmarish horror that left him vomiting uncontrollably on the bathroom floor upon waking, feverish and crying out in terror in his desperate gulps for air.

His head was pounding.

The nausea, mercifully, subsided, and he tentatively sat back up. He had to shield his eyes against the glow of the screen; he couldn't stand to look directly into the brightness.

It was a good story, he knew. It needed a ton of improvement- it had some major plot gaps, and was a little repetitive in some places- but even that could be smoothed over without entirely re-working it, as he had done in the past, returning to his desk only a day after writing an entire Word document that he would promptly delete in frustration at his pretensions, at the yesterday-self's belief that this _dump_ could somehow have fulfilled the expectations he had set for himself.

This story was different.

"_This monster had a friend. A little boy. They played together all the time on a big island they lived on all by themselves."_

_Dylan wrinkled his brow. "How come the boy wasn't scared of the monster?"_

"_Because this monster wasn't a bad monster."_

_Dylan gave him a very world-weary expression._

"_All monsters are bad, Dad," he informed Eli, with the patience of explaining the sky is blue. "That's why they're monsters."_

"_Can I tell the story?"_

_Dylan immediately quieted, nestling back down to Eli's hold. _

"_This monster," continued Eli, "was best friends with the boy. And when he was with the boy, he forgot he was a monster. And the boy forgot, too, because, he loved the monster and the monster loved him."_

"_But then," Eli went on, "something bad happened."_

_Dylan wriggled anxiously in his arms. "What?" he whispered._

"_He forgot he was the monster again," Eli whispered back. "He forgot he was a monster, with big, terrible teeth. And he ate his friend."_

_Dylan jolted, sitting upright in bed. "Why?' he demanded._

"_Because he loved the boy," Eli said. _

_Dylan's lower lip jutted out. "Why did he eat him? You can't eat someone you love!"_

"_He thought he was helping," Eli murmured. His eyes looked beyond Dylan's worried, confused face, to the wall behind him. All those unmanned boats, set adrift to their own devices, trapped on a lonely expanse of never-ending sea. _

_Eli glanced down at his hands. They were shaking slightly, he noticed. He slid them under his thighs, so Dylan wouldn't notice. "He didn't like being a monster."_

_He expected Dylan to say something, but he remained silent. He lay completely still, his eyes overbright and feverish._

_Eli cleared his throat. "Once he got to the monster island, the other monsters wouldn't let him live there anymore. They said, 'you don't have your teeth anymore. You can't live here if you don't have any teeth.' So the monster decided that he would go live somewhere else. He jumped into the ocean, and swam out far, far out."_

_Eli slid one hand out from under his leg and stretched it out like a horizon, demonstrating just how far out he meant. _

"_He swam so far out," Eli proclaimed, his voice dropping hauntingly," that the water was so dark he felt like he was falling through the sky."_

Dylan was afraid of the water. When Helen and her second husband, who owned a vacation home in Florida, invited them down for a week in the summer, the boy would not even walk on the part of the beach where the sand changed color. While Clare and Darcy had rushed at the water, splashing one another and giggling like schoolgirls, Dylan had clung to Helen, refusing to take a single step, howling and burying his face into her neck if she tried to make a move towards the water. Finally, she had handed him over to Eli, who wasn't much for the beach anyway and didn't mind hanging out with Dylan under the umbrella, watching him scooping sand methodically into his bucket, his small, red face screwed up in intense concentration.

Eventually, though, the heat had gotten to him, and Eli had tentatively asked if Dylan would want to go cool off in the water.

"I'll go with you," he tried to explain. He hated himself for pushing the kid, but felt his back get more sunburned by the minute. "I promise, I'll hold on. You can just dip your toes in, okay? Look, see where Mom and Aunt Darcy are? See where Grandma Helen is? See, it's not even deep."

Dylan looked out at the water silently, then turned back to his father.

"It's too dark," he'd said somberly, "Too big. You can't see the end."

Eli had spent the rest of the afternoon on the hill of the beach with him, his head spinning. He knew exactly what it was like- being so helpless, overwhelmed, and utterly lost when faced with something as deep, dark, and unconquerable as the vastness of the ocean.

He blinked, slumping down so his head rested in his arms on top of the desk. He really ought to get to sleep.

Hauling himself to his feet, he tiptoed down to the bedroom he and Clare shared. Slowly, gently, trying his hardest not to wake her, he slid in bed beside her, fully clothed and on top of the covers. The tank top she was sleeping in had fallen askew sometime in the depths of her sleep, exposing one bare, freckled, milky shoulder. Her shirt rode up, exposing her bare stomach, contracting in and out, in and out, relaxed and slow, as she breathed, quiet, untroubled. Good, he thought. She needed to sleep. He could tell she hadn't done much of that in the past few days.

He rolled away from her, lying on his back and staring up at the whir of the ceiling fan above him. He was exhausted; hours ago, five minutes ago, he'd wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep the rest of this day away, but now that this day had already bled into the newborn hours of tomorrow, already become today, he was too tired to sleep.

He glanced at the clock. 3:17. Only a few hours until he had to get up, get dressed, get going with this same type of day all over again. Another day to live out the monotony. The molasses drip of minutes, catching in a bucket with a hole in the bottom- no matter how many you seemed to gather, it never filled up. The solid and the fluid, both at once. Briefly, he reminded of Dali, and the painting of the melting clocks- a world where time didn't make sense, where there was no language or linearity or distinguishable sense of the real. The structure and formality in the belief of time slipping away, the measure of life made meaningless.

So much to do tomorrow. He fidgeted restlessly in bed, then momentarily held his breath, fearful he'd awoken Clare. She was out like a rock. Good. She needed to sleep. Water bill to pay, and he might have an overdraft fee; he'd have to check before he paid the bill. Take Dylan to the pediatrician, don't forget. Ask if he needs a booster. Tetanus, kids usually need those pretty often, don't they? He didn't know. He'd never taken Dylan by himself to the doctor. Clare always did that. But Clare had to work tomorrow. He'd find out. He should probably write this all down…did he ever get word from the insurance company that they would pay for that dent in Clare's car door? Asshole who backed into her at the grocery store…speaking of insurance, he needed to figure out if his hospital stay was covered under their health care plan. He figured, amount of times he'd spent in and out of hospitals in the last decade, he ought to know this, but he needed to figure that out. Would probably have to call the company tomorrow and deal with that…great, more bureaucratic bullshit to wade through. And he needed to go to the pharmacy tomorrow, after the pediatrician. Needed to pick up his prescription the doctor had filled this morning in the hospital. What time was that appointment, anyway?

Eli grunted and climbed out of bed. He wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon. More restless insomnia, unable to quiet his mind, tumbling like clothes in a dryer. Pulling on a sweatshirt a pair of socks, he silently padded out of their bedroom, pausing as he closed the door behind him to look at sleeping Clare. She was still fast asleep, the covers curled around her body. She was, for the moment, given a reprieve from her life. From everything he'd brought to it.

He headed towards the back patio, taking a moment to poke his head into Dylan's room. His son had fallen asleep, at long last, after his father's story, and now his body was sprawled out over the covers, tossed over it like a throw blanket, in a way that amazed Eli. Even as an infant, he had been surprised at the amount of space little-boy-body, far-flung and open as a desert night, could take up.

His knuckles tapped the wood gently, pushing the door open a little bit more, and Eli poked his head into the room more fully. In the bare crease of the light that ribboned into the bedroom from the hallway, Dylan's face was slivered enough so Eli could see his closed eyes and the tenseness in his face; the questioning anxiety of whatever dreams filled a six-year-old's mind.

Maybe, he mused, it was the knowledge of the awareness that troubled him. The awakening of the fact that his name is Dylan Edward Goldsworthy, he is six years old (going on seven), and that this, right here, right now, is his slice of eternity; he is alive and a part of everything around him, profoundly connected to it, but also profoundly disconnected from it as well. Realizing, perhaps, for the first time in his short, pendulous life, the nausea that accompanies that level of awareness, when you actually experience your insignificance in the world, your complete and utter pointlessness, and yet you are still here and able to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, experience. Yet in order to do so, you need to compartmentalize yourself; shut certain parts of yourself off entirely, even, so that the nausea of all things bright and breathing and dark and unreal does not overwhelm you.

Probably not, Eli backtracked, snorting internally. Dylan was six.

He was probably thinking about the story Eli had told him. Dreaming of a monster who eats little boys and makes boats of teeth; a monster who falls in love so wholly that he literally swallows those he loves with his need for them, then exiles himself to a lonely island, mourning his inability to love without devouring. Perhaps Dylan would wake up (or maybe he already had) sometime during the night, certain that this monster had eaten him whole in his sleep, and that eventually he would be spit out as only a pile of broken bones.

_My son,_ Eli thought. _I love him. And because I love him, I will destroy him. I do to everything else I love. I am a cannibal. _

The thought overwhelmed him; he slipped to the edge of Dylan's bed. One of the boy's arms was sprawled out off the bed; Eli picked it up and gently, reverently, placed it next to his son's body, pausing a moment to kiss the still-pudgy, still baby-soft knuckles, and felt that same overpowering rush of swooning tenderness come over him as before.

"Don't go," he whispered. "Don't go. I'll eat you up; I love you so."


End file.
